Dr Camilla Toulmin is Senior Associate at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), and its former Director (2003-2015). She also holds a professorship at Lancaster University where she focuses on linking research and practice on environment and development in Africa. An economist by training, she has worked mainly in Africa on agriculture, land tenure, climate and livelihoods. This has combined field research, policy analysis and advocacy. Her work has aimed at understanding how environmental, economic and political change impact on people’s lives, and how policy reform can bring real change on the ground. This has combined field research, policy analysis, capacity building and advocacy. It has involved engaging with people at many different levels from farmers and researchers, to national governments, NGOs, donor agencies and international bodies.

A Fellow of the Open Society Foundations (2016-2017) she has recently completed a longitudinal study of her former field-work sites in central Mali, to document change over 35 years in farming livelihoods in this dry, risk-prone environment. This has been published in January 2020.

Camilla studied Economics at Cambridge and London, before gaining her doctorate in Economics at Oxford. Her doctoral thesis was published by OUP: Cattle, women and wells: Managing household survival in the Sahel. Camilla is fluent in English and French. She is Chair of tve, and the Advisory Board of the Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), trustee of Little Sparta, Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, the St Andrews University Prize for the Environment, and the Institut Français d’Ecosse.

Her new book – Land, Investment and Migration: Thirty-five years of village life in Mali – was published by Oxford University Press in January 2020.

Recent publications include:

Desertification in the Sahel: Local Practice meets Global Narrative, Toulmin, C and Karen Brock. In (Eds) Behnke, R. and Mortimore, M. (2016). The End of Desertification, Springer Verlag, Berlin.

Investing in institutional software to build climate resilience. C Toulmin, C Hesse, D Tari and C King-Okumu (June 2015). http://anglejournal.com/articl…

What can the social sciences bring to an understanding of food security? (Eds) Cooper, C and Michie, J (2014) Why the social sciences matter. Palgrave.

Climate change in Africa (Zed Books, 2009).

By this expert

Pr Kako Nubukpo: « Le Covid-19 montre que les chaînes de valeur mondiales ne devraient pas être des chaînes de dépendance pour l’Afrique »

Article | Sep 1, 2020

Dans le cadre de cet entretien, Pr Kako Nubukpo, Doyen de la Faculté des Sciences Economiques et de Gestion (FASEG) de l’Université de Lomé au Togo, et ancien Ministre de la Prospective et de l’Evaluation des politiques publiques du Togo, revient sur l’impact économique et social de la crise du COVID-19 au Togo et sur ses répercussions sur les politiques économiques dont les réformes monétaires et fiscales en cours en Afrique de l’Ouest et Centrale.

Professor Njuguna Ndung’u: COVID-19 is a wake-up call to reform the healthcare system and make it inclusive for all

Article | Jul 24, 2020

In this conversation with Folashadé Soulé and Camilla Toulmin, Pr Njuguna Ndung’u, a Kenyan economist, Director of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), a pan-African organization devoted to the advancement of economic policy research and training in sub-Saharan Africa, and former Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya (2007-2015) analyses how the pandemic creates more fragility in African economies, but also how reforms could be implemented during this crisis; and the urgent need for investment in strong health institutional capacities

Takyiwaa Manuh: Governments need to focus more on the gendered impacts of COVID-19

Article | Jun 26, 2020

In this conversation with Folashadé Soulé and Camilla Toulmin, Pr Takyiwaa Manuh analyses how the pandemic has disproportionately affected women at different levels especially in Ghana, and describes why governments need to focus more strongly on the gendered impacts of COVID-19 in both their sanitary and economic response.

Felwine Sarr : La crise du COVID-19 indique une nécessité de changement et de repenser le monde de demain

Article | Jun 16, 2020

Entretien avec Pr Felwine Sarr, Professeur Titulaire des Universités et agrégé en économie à l’Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis au Sénégal, pour la série d’INET sur COVID-19 et l’Afrique